Our centre is one of the private schools situated in Alicante that offers chess as a primary school subject.

Chess has a lot of benefits with regard to the education of children. We will now provide information concerning the discipline in question.

The first country to promote Chess as an educational activity in schools was Russia. This sport has formed part of the nation’s educational plan for many decades and thus, it is no surprise that Russia is considered as one of the main developers of the Sport in the world.

The impressive progress of Russian students soon got other countries interested in Chess. In the 80’s, Terrel Bell said that “one of the best and most entertaining ways to develop your childs’ intelligence is by showing them how to play chess”

Later, Dr. Sturat Margulies, an IBM investigator, performed an investigation in relation to the effects of chess on the intelligence of children. According to the researcher, the results of his investigation appear to prove that there was a significant improvement in the reading skills of those students who learnt how to play chess. In contrast, those who did not play chess generally demonstrated less reading capabilities. Therefore, there appears to be some kind of correlation between chess and the development of reading comprehension.

As a result, taking into account these important results, IBM decided to finance the installation of software in various schools which will enable students to practice the sport on computers.

The importance of Chess in schools has flourished over the years and in 1995, UNESCO officially recommended all of it´s members to include the sport as a subject in their respective educational plans.

According to recent research, the 3 most important benefits of chess are:

– It exercises both hemispheres of the brain.
– it raises your IQ and it optimizes memory improvement.
– It improves creativity.

Other studies highlight an array of alternative benefits, such as the imrprovement of reading skills, concentration and problem-solving skills. Brain researchers believe that chess physically modifies the brain, making it more capable in general.

Statistics related to the integration of chess as a subject in schools show that over 80 % are extremely satisfied with the results obtained by playing the sport.

Due to the fact that our centre is bilingual, we also offer students the possibility to study the subject of chess in English. Moroever, the teacher in charge of this subject at our school has just successfully finished the double-course “curso docentes + school instructor”, a course which only 17 specialists have in the whole of Spain.

Lastly, in order to demonstrate that our school is totally in favour of the benefits of this sport, we our going to host the IV under-12s Open Chess Tournament at our centre.